Laptop Menubar Gadgets
February 16th, 2005
These OS X menubar gadgets aren’t necessarily for laptops, but I only found
found them because of the amount of time I’ve spent with my laptop recently.
But I think they’re both big time savers.
Synergy
Classic (Menubar iTunes Controller)
Synergy is a flexible iTunes remote that sits in your menubar. While it’s
capable of doing all sorts of things, I use it for the following few reasons.
It will put a rewind, fast forward and play/pause button in your menubar.
You can also set keyboard commands for just about anything you’d want to
do with iTunes: skip songs, rate songs, toggle shuffle, adjust volume and
a lot more. If you listen to iTunes a lot via your laptop, Synergy is a
lifesaver. And it’s reasonably priced.
MenuMeters
(Menubar System Status)
I really only needed something to show my network activity in the menubar,
since sometimes it’s hard to tell when your dialup connection has died using
NetZero. MenuMeters can display network activity as well as show the speed
at which you’re downloading. In addition to monitoring your network, you
can display the status of your CPU, disk or memory. Each menubar display
is customizable also, with different types of displays available. You can
even change the colors of the individual display elements. Best of all,
MenuMeters is free.